


(Don’t I Make You) Cringe

by winter_angst



Category: Captain America (Movies)
Genre: Creepy, Domestic Fluff, Frottage, HYDRA Husbands, Halloween, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-24
Updated: 2019-10-24
Packaged: 2021-01-02 16:18:10
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,638
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21164525
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/winter_angst/pseuds/winter_angst
Summary: Jack loves Halloween and Brock loves Jack.In a two story house on Everest Way Brock encounters something he cannot explain.





	(Don’t I Make You) Cringe

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Kalika999 (kalika_999)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/kalika_999/gifts).

> My attempts at a creepy story for my match. 
> 
> Kali, I really hope you enjoy.

The second autumnal colors began to bloom around the two story house on Everest Way, Jack shifted gears. Brock was equal parts amused and embarrassed of Jack’s near childlike love of the ‘Spooky Season’ — and everything that came with it. Of course he was partial to the pumpkin spice themes and the warm sweaters he got to wear on his morning walks around the block but Jack’s love wasn’t of autumn, exactly.

It was Halloween. 

The first of October was practically a holiday within itself, a goofy wide grin blooming on his typically stoic face as he started to go through the ad section first, rather than reading the paper. “We have so much of that junk in the basement Jack,” Brock zipped his coffee watching stray orange and red leaves drift free of the brightly colored branch. “Do we really need to buy more?”

“Yup.” Simple, straight to the point — that was the Jack that Brock knew and loved. 

He loved every single part of Jack, to be completely honest. From his thick ebony locks and scar on his chin all the way down to his size 14 shoe that was completely and unnecessarily difficult to buy for. “Eggs and toast?” Brock suggested hoping to draw Jack’s attention from the bright ads for Halloween decor. 

“Hmm, what if we get a giant inflatable pumpkin to go beside the cat? Stick the ghoul on the other side? I can put together the spider out back…”

Brock tilted his head forward in frustration and defeat. He knew he was lucky, as far as hobbies go. Jack could have preferred to be out on the water, casting for trophy fish or painfully boring by playing a million holes of golf at some stuffy club. All his attention could be consumed by fantasy sports leagues or video games constantly. Instead, Brock simply lost Jack for a month out of the year while he indulged his deep love for all things scary. 

Brock’s hatred of creepy things had been life long and, in his opinion, further proof that he was the normal one on the relationship. It didn’t stop Jack from dragging him to the couch to watch terrifying movies with scary creatures, demons, and jump scares. It was all for good fun in the past and this year, their first year in the two story house on Everest Street would be no different.

•• •• •• ••

Brock was a real estate agent, and a damned good one according to his sales records. Because of it, he had varying hours. Some weeks he was constantly on the run but he’d sold his last house before moving into the home they occupied and currently experiencing a typical lull. Few people wished to sell in the fall so Brock had considerable time on his hands. 

He figured getting ahead on the decorations would slowdown Jack’s Halloween drive for a day or so. Brock turned on the weather channel to chase away the silence of an empty house and opened the windows to let cool crisp air flow through. He propped the basement door open and started down the steps. 

Halfway down the flight, a knock on the door echoed down to him. Brock turned around to answer it, expecting Jehovah’s Witnesses or perhaps a nosy neighbor. The door stop shifted suddenly and the door slammed shut. Brock startled at the noise and the abrupt darkness, hands feeling for the wall instinctively. His heart began to hammer, the eeriness of being in a dark basement alone setting in. 

Fear gripped him as he carefully made his way up. Mentally he ran through all the horror flicks Jack showed him and they all seemed to come to a common consensus where dark basements were involved: you’re going to be murdered by some creature or ghost. 

No one had died in the house so Brock tried to put that line of thinking to bed. And as far as he was aware it wasn’t sitting on some ancient Native American burial ground. He hadn’t picked up some creepy dollhouse or ancient relics. The chances of this being anything but a sheer coincidence was exceedingly low. 

But his heart still raced as he grasped the doorhandle. He expected it to jam, to be cold to the touch or for a ghostly figure to emerge through the wood and throw him down the steps. Instead the door fell open and Brock ended up on his hands and knees in the hallways, retinas searing with the sudden light. 

The knocking continued as Brock slowly got to his feet, a bit numb. He made his way down the hallway, trying to process what had just happened while the insistent knocking continued. Finally reaching the front door he pulled it open, expecting a door to door salesperson or delivery man. He did not expect to find two children, a boy and a girl, with bright smiles and dimples. They wore nice clothing, neat and free of stains. 

“Hello mister,” the girl said, her voice like a bell. “Can we use your phone?”

Brock smiled back automatically. Of course he would let the children use his phone, an immediate sense of paternal concern making him looking around anxiously for their parents. He saw two bikes, propped up neatly on their mailbox. 

“Please mister,” the boy said insistently, taking his silence as hesitation. “We’re lost and we should call our folks.”

‘Folks’ stood out him rather abruptly, the strange speech pattern reminding him of his eery moment prior in the attic. By chance he looked down at the boy and that was when he saw his eyes. Immediately Brock was consumed by sheer dread, terrified beyond reason as he gazed in the void like darkness. He could think only if death, imminent and painful, and he lurched back from the cherub faced children, unable to tear his eyes away from their black eyes. 

“No.” Brock whispered, heart pounding loudly. “No!”

He clenched his eyes shut and slammed the door, the sound booming through the enterance room as Brock’s shaking handles fumbled over the dead bolt. His breathes came quick and shallow, just shy of panicked hyperventilating and a cracked whimper crept from his throat. It the sort of noise that Brock would never have thought he’d make but with his hands and body shaking violently as cold perspiration seeped from his clammy skin, he couldn’t shake the wrongness of whatever he’d encountered. 

He backed away from the door, from the insistent knocking and the bell like voice begging please, please them in. Brock’s back hit the wall and he jumped violently, half expecting one of them to be inside despite the barrier and once assured it was a solid surface, he pressed against it, trying to ground himself. 

“Please,” the boy said next, voice muffled through the wood. “Please just open the door. Open the door, mister. Please, sir. Please Brock. Open the door.”

His breath seemed to vanish and his lungs withered as the child said his name. He closed his eyes and all he could see were those eyes. The chilling black orbs that promised nothing but misery and damnation. Brock was shaking violently, head downcast as he tried to comprehend what was happening. His fear made it impossible to process anything besides badbadbad. 

He could hear them giggling, distorted and echoing like it was coming from a long tunnel. Brock pressed his hands over his ears, the laughter piercing and almost painful as adrenaline flooded his blood but terror locked up his muscles leaving his painfully aware and yet powerless to flee away from the door. It was a strange feeling, the rising hysteria that he kept hardly under wraps. 

Faintly he felt his back sliding down the wall as he hugged his knees tightly and told himself to wake up, begged whatever higher being existed to help him, willed it all to stop. 

“Let me in Brock!”

Jack’s voice shattered the moment, splintering his terror into something slightly more manageable. “Jack.” Brock whispered, almost doubting it for a moment before his desperation to be held, a feeling he never openly admitted to, flooded him. 

He scrambled to his feet, nearly ripping his nail from the bed of his finger as he pulled the dead bolt and yanked open the door. Jack looked confused, a bit annoyed, but mostly concerned as Brock flung his body at him. His leather jacket smelled slightly smoky but perfectly familiar and Brock craved it. 

“What the hell, Brock?” Jack set down a bag to run a broad hand over his back. “I was standing out here knocking for like ten minutes.”

Brock let out a strange sound, a dry strangled sob as he tried to comprehend his experience, to explain what had happened. Jack carefully pressed him back into the house while Brock scanned the empty yard. No two children, no two bikes, just a lawn full of leaves he had intended to start raking. 

Jack pressed him into his armchair and turned away, softly mentioning tea but Brock lurched forward grabbing his forearm with a bruising grip. “Please don’t,” he rasped. “I — don’t leave me alone.”

Jack’s brows knit together. His warm, lovely green eyes confused as he nodded after only a moment of confusion and shifted Brock so he was lying against his chest, body resting on jack in the sort of positioning Brock typically would have shied away from on the basis of his own manliness. But right now, he didn’t care. He huddled with his face pressed against Jack’s throat, shivering. 

Jack didn’t push him right away, running a cool hand under his shirt, fingers trailing along his back while he pressed his lips against Brock’s hairline with feather like kisses. Eventually Brock’s shock wore down, a sense of safety making him hold Jack just a little less tightly. 

“What happened?” Jack finally asked softly. “I’ve never seen you like this.”

Brock’s mouth was dry but he tried to wet his lips regardless. He wasn’t ready to peel away from Jack just yet, pulse still rabbiting. “These…” children seemed like the wrong word; he knew somehow that whatever they were it wasn’t human. “I don’t know.”

“You don’t know?” Jack echoed. “Is it...your father?”

That took Brock by surprise, especially because save for hiring the care nurse to take care of the bastard’s rapidly deteriorating health Brock had spoken sparsely about him. The dose of reality helped a little, that familiar twinge of anger and hatred followed by guilt grounding in a way that even Jack couldn’t be. 

“No.” Brock pulled in a shaking breath. “I saw something.”

Jack continued to rub his back, not pushing for further elaboration but Brock knew him all too well. 

“They looked like kids but they weren’t. They - they knew my name and were trying to get in and — ” Brock was wracked with tremors once more, their giggling all the more unnerving now out of the moment. 

“Hey, take a breath for me.” Jack held him a bit tighter. “They tried to break in?”

“They want-wanted to use the phone and-and… They wanted to kill me, Jack. Kill me and-and you and I just knew it — ”

Brock was vaguely aware of the tears running down his cheeks, but he couldn’t will himself to wipe them away or to hide the way his voice broke. 

“Hey,” Jack’s voice was low and husky, arms wrapping him tightly in an embrace told Brock he was safe. “It’s okay. I got you, I’m here now.”

“You don’t understand,” Brock protested between his quiet sons. “They were…evil.”

“There are monsters in this world,” Jack said hollowly. “And I’m sorry I wasn’t here to show them exactly what I think of them scaring you like this.”

Faintly Brock was aware his point hadn’t gotten across, that Jack thought these were homophobic teens who had decided to torment the new gays in town and somewhere beneath his fear he was annoyed Jack thought he couldn’t teach some punks a lesson. But right now he just wanted to be held and for Jack to never let him go. 

“Your shaking, let’s get you into bed.”

Carefully Jack helped Brock to his feet, walking him up toward the stairs. The numbness hadn’t completed abated when they walked past the attic door and Brock’s breath caught. 

“The door closed on me,” Brock managed, trying to formulate how to explain that strange experience.

“Probably a draft, I’ll take a look tomorrow,” Jack assures with casualness that typically would have infuriated him but instead made him wonder if it was something so simple that he was reading too much into.

Their bedroom was Brock’s pride and joy, the master bed with exposed woodwork, a walk in closet and an en-suite with a marble tub and a glass shower with waterfall settings. Their friend Wanda has done the decor and the rich cappuccino and beige fit them both nicely while the king size sleigh bed was a wonder within its own. 

Jack shrugged out of his jacket while ensuring contact remained between them, and carefully peeled Brock out of his own clothes and into soft sweatpants and one of Jack’s faded tees. Brock only wore them when he was feeling under the weather or on those rare nights when Jack and him weren’t together. 

“Come on,” Jack urged, pulling him under the alternative down comforter and between silky sheets that Brock had rolled eyes at initially but now needed. “I’ve got you. You’re okay. We’re okay.”

“It was…” words failed him. He was ashamed of how close he was to their demise, how ready he was to let Them in, whatever the fuck they were. “Did you lock the door?”

“Mmhm,” Jack assured him. “Just relax okay?”

The warmth of Jack beside him made him hunger for contact, the cold ebbing away slowly. Brock hesitantly kissed Jack under the jaw, and then the soft hollow of his throat feeling a small moan of pleasure vibrating beneath his lips. 

“Whatcha there Brock?” Jack asked playfully.

Brock was suddenly aching for contact, briskly rubbing his erection against Jack’s thigh. He always thought the idea of near death experiences making you horny was a movie trope but now he understood. Nothing made him feel more alive than his nerve endings sparking with pleasure as he suckled a love bruise on Jack’s collarbone. 

“Whoa,” chuckled Jack, slipping away from reach.

Brock whined, a truly undignified sound as his hips strained forward for more friction. 

“I don’t think you’re in the right frame of mind for that right now,” 

Jack kissed just chastely and it felt like a slap in a strange way. He didn’t want to be denied right now, he needed to be indulged. To erase the bad feelings he had experienced with the good shocking sensation of an orgasm. Still, pouting about it seemed juvenile and he knew it wouldn’t sway Jack who was oddly unrelenting when it came to his moral standards and taking advantage of Brock was one of the things he wouldn’t be shaken about. 

So Brock settled in to be soothed, trying to forget what he couldn’t explain and what no one would ever believe.

•• •• •• •• 

“Christ on a cracker,” Brock ran a hand over his face in exasperation as Jack gleefully presented the massive blow up lawn ornament of a cartoon witch atop a broom. 

The entire front of the house had gone from suburban chic to spook-tacular and Brock was somewhere been embarrassed and pleased by it. Their next door neighbor seemed to have given up trying to compete which was smart because no one loved Halloween more than Jack. 

“It was on sale,” Jack said simply, as if that somehow made up for the fact that their lawn was now completely taken up by various decorations. 

Brock’s wrist still ached from carving the eighteen jack-o-lanterns for his husband the jack-o-ass who insisted he help because he ‘loved’ him, or whatever. 

“Mmhm,” Brock rolled his eyes lovingly but leaned against Jack’s side. “It sure is something though.”

“You really think so?” Jack’s eyes sparkled and Brock would never understand how his praise meant more than anyone else’s. “It’s not too over the top.”

“Oh you’re way past over the top,” snorted Brock casting a critical look around. “But you did a damned good job.”

Jack caught his lips in a victorious kiss and Brock smiled against his lips before melting in, letting him wrap his arms tightly around him in a shameless display of PDA. 

•• •• •• ••

Brock hated costumes. 

He didn’t like people in them and he hated wearing one but Jack loves it so much he made himself put his discomfort aside if the sake of Jack’s happiness. Maybe his hatred of people concealing their identity was something to be unraveled in the therapy session he would never go to but for now, he forced a smile with the uncomfortable plastic fangs because he was a vampire for whatever reason.

Disney Princesses, unicorns, dragons, pumpkins, witches — kids flicked through the neighborhood with cheerful ‘trick or treat’ called a far too loud volume while they groped around for their favorite candies. Jack loved it, of course, happy to indulge on the request for extra candies while Brock was trying to ensure they’d have enough to make it to the end of the night. 

Not that he wanted it lying around because he’d then he’d be snacking on it and his waistline didn’t need any sweets. Jack excused himself to the restroom as the night was winding down. Trick or treaters came thirty to forty minutes apart and Brock was itching to flick off the porch light. He sighed as another knock came, forcing a smile onto his face in preparation for whatever tired adult and sugar high kid awaited.

He was greeted instead by a lone child wearing a sheet. 

He waited for the classic line but it didn’t come. well aware that the child may have been nonverbal he didn’t think much of it, offering the bowl. 

“Happy Halloween.” Brock offered half heartedly. 

After all, it wasn’t like kids could tell the difference between true enthusiasm and half-assed attempts. There were a few people in the street and someone at the door across the way. The child do not reach into the bowl so Brock took a small handful and offered it out. 

“It’s okay,” he assured him. “Take what you want or take all of it.”

As the child stood there, a familiar unease crept over Brock. He wasn’t sure when it struck him to look at the eye holes but when he did, he knew he had made a mistake. 

“Hello Brock.” The black eyed child said. 

No whites in its eyes, just darkness. Brock could feel himself fading and he didn’t understand. All he felt was cold, unrelenting terror and dread. 

•• •• •• ••

“You’re so quiet,” Jack murmured into Brock’s hair.

His husband rolled over to smile at him, but it was plastic and stretched far too much in the edges. His quiff was lying flat from the shower and Jack ran his fingers through his damp hair. 

“I made you tea.” Brock said flatly, head lying stiffly against his chest.

Jack ran his hands along his exposed forearms, almost flinching away from how cold his skin was. “Your freezing Brock,” Jack carefully pulled the covers over the two of them. “You okay?”

“I’m okay,” Brock voice lacked any inflection at all and Jack ran his hand along cold skin, unsettled and confused. “We’re both going to be okay.”

Jack kissed the nape of Brock’s neck, uncertain on what had Brock so odd tonight but hopeful it would pass overnight. 

•• •• •• ••

“I like the house,” Steve told Bucky the moment they pulled in. 

“Let the realtor show us around first,” Bucky chuckled, giving his hand a squeeze.

The artist got out impatiently, looking at the two story house on Everest Way. Late September had the leaves turning beautiful shades of orange as fall approached. Steve could already see those colors on his canvas, could feel his brush in his fingers. Inspiration had come so sparsely since his last gallery and yet here it was in a tenfold. 

The realtor got out of her car to meet them with a smile and showed them around the property and the look at the house just solidified all Steve’s feelings. The tour ended at the island in the center of the kitchen and Steve couldn’t help the smile on his face as he held onto Bucky’s hand.

Bucky had muttered his appreciation at the master bedroom and the finished attic which was a promising office space for him once the copious amounts of junk was cleaned out.

“This house really is on top shape, the prior owners put a lot of work and money into it — all new piping, electrical, flooring… Furniture comes with the property, all very nice. The stove was replaced however following...the incident.”

“What incident?” Steve looked at Bucky who suddenly appeared apologetic.

“No bodies were found,” Bucky began as if that would answer his questions. 

“It was probably an insurance scam gone wrong,” the realtor agreed. “November first of last year the ambulance responded to the CO2 alarms — all replaced, by the way — and found the house completely empty with the gas turned on.”

“What, so the priors owners just left?” Steve raised a brow.

“That’s the strange thing. Their vehicles were still here and the house was locked from the inside. Just one of those little mysteries — but this is a great house.” 

Steve didn’t linger on the past, still seeing brush strokes behind his eyelids. 

“I still like it,” Steve decided quietly after a moment. 

Bucky settled his hand on the small of his fiancé’s back with a smile. “Where do we sign?”


End file.
